Mac – Emacs modify quit-window to delete buffer not just bury it

elispemacs

I'd like to make Emacs not just bury a buffer but kill it too when I press q in a *Completions*/*Help*/etc buffer. I can't get the substitute-key-definition function to work. I'm running Emacs24 on OSX.

Here's what I have:

(substitute-key-definition
        'quit-window '(lambda () (interactive) (quit-window "KILL")) global-map)

Best Answer

The other answer actually gives slightly incompatible behavior. Consider a situation where you already have a frame split into two windows, then you open a help buffer and quit it. quit-window is smart enough to know that it shouldn't kill the window, just the buffer. It actually even has a few more clever tricks up its sleeve so our best bet is to work with it and just tweak it a bit. Here's a simple way of achieving what you want:

(defadvice quit-window (before quit-window-always-kill)
  "When running `quit-window', always kill the buffer."
  (ad-set-arg 0 t))
(ad-activate 'quit-window)

Related Solutions

Macos – Warnings/Errors with emacs cocoa (23.2) on OSX Terminal

This got rid of the error for me:

$ sudo mv /usr/bin/emacs /usr/bin/emacs.old

Now edit /usr/bin/emacs in a text editor and paste this in:

#!/bin/sh

EMACS_PATH=/Applications/MacPorts/Emacs.app/Contents/MacOS/Emacs

if [ $(id -u) = "0" ]; then
    sudo $EMACS_PATH "$@"
else
    $EMACS_PATH "$@"
fi

(Replace $EMACS_PATH with the actual path to your Emacs binary.) Finally, make your shell script executable:

$ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/emacs

For whatever reason, Cocoa Emacs doesn't like to be linked to /usr/bin/emacs, but it runs without complaints if you invoke it from its actual path. Probably a working directory issue.

If someone knows a better way to do this, I'm all ears.

edit: updated script to handle quotes in arguments properly

Mac – Emacs as daemon on OS X with window-system

Running a process or application as a launchd daemon gives it a very different environment from running it normally or on the command line. I wonder if it might not work better to instead use a shell script as a login item.

For example:

#!/bin/bash
while true
do
  open -W /Applications/Emacs.app
done

This script would need to be saved to a file with a .command extension and 755 permissions (chmod 0755 myemacsscript.command) and then added to the System Preferences : Login : Login Items pane.

When you login, Terminal will launch and run this script. You will probably want to setup a default terminal profile that excludes terminal from prompting on quit for this particular script, so that it doesn't hold you up when you log out.

I have no idea if this will fix the particular problems with Emacs.app, but it may at least provide an environment closer to what Emacs.app expects.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Macos – Warnings/Errors with emacs cocoa (23.2) on OSX Terminal

Mac – Emacs as daemon on OS X with window-system

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